A data processing environment, such as a data center, can concurrently execute jobs on behalf of multiple requesters. In a data processing system that can be made up of a relatively large number of physical machines that are interconnected by switches, it can be difficult to determine an efficient placement of jobs on the physical machines. Also, if the number of jobs that are to be allocated is relatively large, computational resources that are consumed to perform the placement of jobs on physical machines can be relatively high.